U.S. tries new tack on Iran

July 17, 2008|By ELAINE SCIOLINO and STEVEN LEE MYERS The New York Times

PARIS — The Bush administration's decision to send a senior American official to participate in international talks with Iran this weekend reflects a double policy shift in the struggle to resolve the impasse over the country's nuclear program.

First, the Bush administration has decided to abandon its longstanding position that it would meet face to face with Iran only after the country suspended its uranium enrichment, as demanded by the U.N. Security Council.

Second, a U.S. partner at the table injects new importance to the negotiating track of six global powers confronting Iran - France, Britain, Germany, Russia, China and the United States - although the official stance is that no substantive talks can begin until uranium enrichment stops.

The increased engagement raised questions of whether the Bush administration would alter its stance toward Iran as radically as it did with North Korea, risking a fresh schism with conservatives who have accused the White House of granting concessions to rogue states without extracting enough in return.

The administration sought to describe the talks as a continuation of the strategy it has always pursued: halting Iran's nuclear activities without having to resort to military force.

The presence of William J. Burns, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, at the meeting with Saeed Jalili, Iran's nuclear negotiator, in Geneva on Saturday, "sends a strong signal to the Iranian government that the United States is committed to diplomacy," the State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, said on Wednesday. McCormack insisted there had been no change in policy. All of the Bush administration's diplomatic partners, as well as Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief and the leader of the talks, have been pressing Washington to join in. They say the Iranians will take any proposal seriously only if the United States is a full partner.

European officials hailed the decision as an important shift signaling that with just six months left in office, the Bush administration is seeking to avoid a war with Iran. A senior European official directly involved in the diplomacy also welcomed the decision to send Burns, the State Department's third-ranking official, calling it a "major change" in U.S. policy.

Dana M. Perino, the White House press secretary, said it was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who had approached the president about sending Burns. One official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Rice had decided to test Iran's willingness to consider an international package of incentives meant to coax Iran into making concessions on its nuclear program.

The presence of an American at the talks this weekend may help quiet the mounting calls in both the United States and Israel for military strikes against Iran because of its recent expansion of its uranium enrichment program and its unwillingness to fully explain its suspicious past nuclear activities to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

In Tehran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, said on Wednesday that his country had "clearly defined red lines" that had to be respected in negotiations, a reference to Iran's insistence that it has the right to peaceful nuclear energy.

But "if the negotiating parties enter negotiations with respect toward the Iranian nation" and "with the observance of these red lines, the officials of our country will negotiate," the ayatollah said in a speech quoted by state radio, Reuters reported.

John R. Bolton, a former chief delegate to the United Nations appointed by Bush who criticized the administration's decision to remove North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, said, "Just when you think the administration is out of U-turns, they make another one. This is further evidence of the administration's complete intellectual collapse."

From the opposite side of the spectrum, Sen. John Kerry, Bush's Democratic opponent in 2004, said the decision could be "the most welcome flip-flop in recent diplomatic history."